Tuesday, August 09, 2016

Little Boats and Hatch Chiles--Letter #87

Dear Governor Ducey,

On Sunday,
Erik and the kids and I stopped by the grocery store to buy ingredients for
chili verde. Hatch chiles are at the Farmer’s Market Store, as they are every
August. I could write a whole letter about the Farmer’s Market Store—how it’s
the place where you can ask the owners when the Utah Peaches are coming in and
she’ll give you an hour by hour play and even invite you to call her to see if
they’ve made it. It’s the kind of place that sells pinto beans in bulk and
cantaloupe for a dollar. The Farmer’s Market store provides an excellent slice
of Flagstaffian demographics. Navajo, Hispanic, Hopi, Korean, and white
customers all line up to buy cases of roasted Hatch Green Chiles.

When we
were at the not-Farmer’s Market Store (Whole Foods. Farmer’s Market does not
sell fish or pork, cage free or otherwise), I saw the Arizona Daily Sun
headline: “Flagstaff Charters Lacking in Diversity.” I read the article. I
choked a little. My daughter is going to go to a charter school this year. I’m
already struggling a bit with this idea. My dearest friends and one of my
sisters are public school teachers. I am conflicted about the way charter
schools have more flexibility in the students they admit. They don’t have to
teach everyone. They don’t have to provide buses or lunches. And, they aren’t
subject to charges to desegregate. Flagstaff Unified School District is working
to desegregate their schools in an attempt to bring equal opportunity to every
student.

My daughter
is moving from one of the most diverse schools, Puente de Hozho, to one of the
least. 80% of the students at her new school will be white. On the one hand,
this goes against the grain of what public education should provide. An equal
opportunity to learn. On the other hand, when the FUSD schools developed
programs to retain students who they had been losing to the charters, those
programs filled with also white people.

Unequal
access to education is entrenched. I work at NAU. I have colleagues who
reminded me of when I needed to get on the charter school list. I have time to
make my kids’ lunches. My husband has time to drive them to school. I can pick
them up. My privilege makes it possible for my daughter (and later son), to go
on to greater privilege. This privilege hands its misery onto the next
generation.

According to key findings of a new study of the
racial wealth gap released this week by the sponsor of Economic Hardship
Reporting Project, Institute for Policy Studies, and the Corporation for
Economic Development- If current economic trends continue, the average black
household will need 228 years to accumulate as much wealth as their white
counterparts hold today. For the average Latino family, it will take 84 years.

There’s no necessary correlation between being minority
and poverty—except that the United States is built upon the backs of that
inequality. My daughter, at Puente, worked with students who did not have all
the advantages she does. In so doing, she learned that not everyone learns the
same way or thinks the same learning system is the only learning system. She
wants to go to a charter not because she doesn’t want to learn alongside these
students. She wants to go to a charter because this particular charter sets the
bar very high.

What I want is that very high bar be made available
to everyone. I don’t think Charters make it impossible but I don’t think
Charters make that the primary priority. They can’t, I guess, to do what every
school should be able to do: maintain small classes, focus on academics rather
than sports, prepare students for a wildly changing global economy. The small
academies within FUSD, like the one my daughter would have entered if she had
stayed at FUSD, have those opportunities as well.

I think all schools should be as small as the
charters. I think everyone should have access to them. So my daughter and I
agreed that we would work at the charter to find ways to make it more
accessible to people who don’t already have her economic privilege.

The first plan? Maybe I’ll make an additional lunch
and send it with her every day. Maybe I’ll offer to pick someone up from
school. But obviously, the change needs to be a fundamental one. An
acknoleggement that a rising tide raises all the boats. To make it possible for
her Latino counterparts to accumulate as much wealth as she in fewer than 84
years, we’ll have to be the flood.

1 comment:

This post strikes so close to home for me. I have an ongoing inner conflict about teaching in a private school. My school is education the way I think it should be -- small classes, lots of freedom for the teachers, attention to how kids are doing all the way around instead of just in my class or just on a standardized test, ethnically diverse student body -- but also exactly what it shouldn't be, which is financially accessible only to some students. (We have students who get financial aid, including some who get a full ride, but the students are mostly financially privileged.)